Let Me Call You Sweetheart

56

Dr. Smith had sensed something amiss in Kate Carpenter’s attitude toward him all day. Several times he had caught her staring at him with a questioning look. Why? he wondered.

As he sat in his library that evening, in his usual chair, sipping his usual after-office cocktail, he pondered the possible reasons for her odd behavior. He was sure Carpenter had detected the slight tremor in his hand when he performed the rhinoplasty the other day, but that wouldn’t explain the looks she had given him. Whatever was on her mind now was something more troubling, of that he was certain.

It had been a terrible mistake to follow Barbara Tompkins last night. When his car was caught in traffic in front of her apartment building, he had turned away as much as possible, but even so, he thought she might have seen him.

On the other hand, midtown Manhattan was a place where people did frequently catch a glimpse of people they knew. So his being there really wasn’t so unusual.

But a quick, casual glimpse wasn’t enough. He wanted to see Barbara again. Really see her. Talk to her. She wasn’t due for a checkup for another two months. He had to see her before then. He couldn’t wait that long to watch the way her eyes, now so luminous without the heavy lids that had concealed their beauty, smiled at him across the table.

She wasn’t Suzanne. No one could be. But like Suzanne, the more Barbara became accustomed to her beauty, the more her personality enhanced it. He recalled the sullen, plain creature who had first appeared in his office; within a year of the operation Suzanne had capped the transformation with her total change of personality.

Smith smiled faintly, remembering Suzanne’s provocative body language, the subtle moves that made every man turn to look at her. Then she had begun to tilt her head just a little, so that she gave whomever she was talking with the sense of being the only person in the universe.

She had even lowered the tone of her voice until it had a husky, intimate quality. Teasingly she would run a fingertip over the hand of the man-and it was always a man-who was chatting with her.

When he had commented on the personality transformation she had undergone, she had said, “I had two good teachers, my stepsisters. We reversed the fairy tale. They were the beauties and I was ugly Cinderella. Only instead of a fairy godmother, I have you.”

Toward the end, however, his Pygmalion fantasy had begun to turn into a nightmare. The respect and the affection she had seemed to have for him had begun to fade. She seemed no longer willing to listen to his counsel. Toward the end she had gone beyond simple flirting. How many times had he warned her that she was playing with fire, that Skip Reardon would be capable of murder if he found out the way she was carrying on?

Any husband of a woman that desirable would be capable of murder, Dr. Smith thought.

With a jolt he looked down angrily at his empty glass. Now there wouldn’t be another chance to reach the perfection he had achieved in Suzanne. He would have to give up surgery before a disaster occurred. It was too late. He knew he was in the beginning stages of Parkinson’s.

If Barbara wasn’t Suzanne, she was of all his living patients the most striking example of his genius. He reached for the phone.

Surely that wasn’t stress in her voice, he thought, when she picked up the receiver and said hello.

“Barbara, my dear, is anything wrong? This is Dr. Smith.”

Her gasp was audible, but then she said quickly, “Oh, no, of course not. How are you, Doctor?”

“I’m fine but I think you might be able to do me a favor. I’m stopping in at Lenox Hill Hospital for a moment to see an old friend who is terminal, and I know I’ll be feeling a bit down. Would you have mercy on me and join me for dinner? I could stop by for you at about seven-thirty.”

“I, I don’t know…”

“Please, Barbara.” He tried to sound playful. “You did say that you owed me your new life. Why not spare me two hours of it?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful. Seven-thirty then.”

“All right, Doctor.”

When Smith hung up, he raised his eyebrows. Was that a note of resignation in Barbara’s voice? he wondered. She almost sounded as though he had forced her into meeting him.

If so, it was one more way in which she was beginning to resemble Suzanne.